


something beautiful, something tragic

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different Framework Universe (Marvel), F/M, Minor Jemma Simmons/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 23:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14092392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Just because they're both working against Hydra doesn't mean their goals always align.





	something beautiful, something tragic

**Author's Note:**

> Title semi-taken from Panic! at the Disco's "Miss Jackson." Which is plot-appropriate but in reality this was inspired by Lawson's "Juliet."
> 
> Prompt: "things you said with no space between us" from outlandishwhalesharks on tumblr

“Don’t look now-” the silky voice, made low by the upper-class British accent wraps around Skye as its owner moves down the bar to take the stool beside her- “but those mouth breathers at the tables are looking to pick you up—and I don’t think their intentions are entirely honorable.”

Skye’s been tracking those idiots in the mirror behind the bar since they came in half an hour ago. There’s not one of them sober enough to pose a real threat to her. Still, her good Samaritan deserves some reassurance after she bothered to come all the way over here, so Skye pulls her badge from inside her jacket and flashes it at her.

Those big doe eyes sparkle at the sight of the badge and a memory flickers across Skye’s mind: Agent Triplett in the commissary saying, “Ladies dig the octopus.” At the time Skye felt a flash of feminine annoyance over it, but watching her good Samaritan’s lip disappear behind her pearly whites, she kinda gets what Triplett was talking about.

“Oh,” she says, eyes darting up from the badge to meet Skye’s. “Then maybe I should be counting on _you_ to watch _my_ back.”

It’s Skye’s turn to drop her gaze, giving her a once-over. She’s small, enough muscle to show she keeps in shape but nothing to brag about. Soft hands. Expensive jewelry. Low-cut dress. Tight skirt. Probably some rich girl out to blow daddy’s money on wild nights.

Skye pockets the badge and, instead of picking her drink back up, lets her hand fall to the bare knee next to her hip. Those pearly whites make another appearance, mouth opening wide in a smile so free of cunning it’s like the sun coming out.

“Maybe you should,” Skye says.

 

 

\-----

 

 

There’s cheap beer on Jemma’s tongue and rough hands in her hair. She lets the agent take the initiative, lets herself be pushed against the wall in the bar’s back hallway. The pain is good, keeps her from losing her head. A knee slots between her thighs, rough denim pushing up the silk of her dress. She grinds down, dropping her head back to release a moan.

The agent chuckles and bends over her neck. “I never do this,” she mutters. “Not that kinda girl.”

“Oh?” Jemma asks, reaching back to unclasp the heavy necklace that’s only getting in the way. “Good thing I am.” The chain swings free, the metal piece on the end carrying it out of the way. Jemma catches it, trying to work the screw one-handed while her other hand is holding Agent Not-That-Kinda-Girl to her breasts.

“Why am I not surprised?” She laughs again, comes back up with a look of false-worry and leaves Jemma’s chest cold in the process. “Promise you’ll be gentle?” she teases.

The screw finally turns and Jemma feels the faint _shunk_ of the mechanism moving into place. She smiles. “I always am.”

The agent takes her face between her hands, pulls her in for another kiss, but before it can land, before Jemma can even lift her arm to drive the needle into her neck, the agent is thrown sideways. She very nearly carries Jemma with her and it’s a good thing she doesn’t because otherwise Jemma would be convulsing unattractively from the electric shock as well.

She barely has time to register the sight before a much larger body is pressing her into the wall and holding her hand above her head to prevent her fighting back. Pain flares up her spine but it barely makes a dent in the sudden wave of desire she feels. That she blames solely on the downed agent’s surprisingly attentive kisses and not at all on the man holding her.

“Let me go,” she demands, “or I’ll poison you too, see if I won’t.”

Ward tightens his grip on her wrist, nearly enough she drops the syringe; she’ll have bruises tomorrow for sure. “I told you not to go after my partner.”

“And I told you, I don’t work for SHIELD.” The word gets her a hand around her throat and Ward’s teeth bared.

He waits a beat, two, five, before hissing, “Are you trying to get us both killed?”

She tugs again at her arm but his grip is like iron. “No. I’m trying to kill _her_.”

“Skye’s off limits,” he says, like his orders have ever meant a damn to her. (She thinks she’s made it very clear they don’t, no matter what he might do or say or promise in return. He can beg all he likes, she never will.)

She scoffs. “I’ve seen her record-” Sunil is always so useful for access to internal Hydra documents- “you can’t honestly tell me the resistance won’t be better off without an agent like _her_ on the opposing side.”

“We’ll be better with her on _our_ side,” Ward says. His tone and touch both have gentled. His thumb is sliding up and down her throat, following the thrum of her pulse, and his weight against her is keeping warm many of the places the agent left.

Though not all. It’s rather difficult to stop her hips from rolling up into his in a blatant offer.

She presses her back into the wall, using the moulding to dig into her own spine and keep her sharp. Somehow it doesn’t work as well as before, not while Ward’s touching her and breathing her same air.

The problem, she thinks, is that she didn’t kill him. There are plenty of men and women who she’s allowed to take her to bed but—with the exception of Sunil, who is as appealing as a landed fish and is too stupid to realize he’s being used—Grant is the only one she’s let live past the night. It’s the familiarity that does it, like coming home after a long day—a ridiculous thought in a world with no room for domesticity, not for them. Her body simply recognizes him and he uses that against her the way he no doubt does against countless marks. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing anything, the twat.

She draws a breath, forcing it past his hand at her throat and into lungs that lift her chest against his. She will _not_ lose the plot. She’s not some naive socialite, for all she plays one most nights.

“You think the agent who brought down Elena Rodriguez is going to give all that up to play nice with the Inhumans and take down Hydra?”

Grant’s dark eyes widen and, close as they are, she can feel his gut churn. She doesn’t blame him; she felt sick just reading the report but in Grant’s other life, his public life, he’s the agent’s partner. He would have been there to see those events first hand.

She relaxes a little, lets some of her weight fall into him and the pain at her back ease up. She’s still got one hand free and she moves it slowly up and down his arm, up and down, up and down, up over the shoulder to cup his cheek. The agent is dangerous—to the population at large, to Grant—he’ll see that and let her do her work and then they can get out of this filthy bar.

“Don’t fuck with me, Jemma,” he says, his voice low and rough like he really wants her to do just that. But his eyes are stormy when they meet hers and not with lust. “You think I don’t know when I’m being seduced?”

She drops her arm. “Do you treat all your one-night stands this way?”

He makes a sound that’s too dark to be a chuckle. “‘One-night’? Yeah, how many of those have we had?”

He lets go of her wrist. Of course he doesn’t let her keep the syringe but it’s a start. She gingerly lowers her arm to her chest while he steps back, bracing herself against the wave of pins and needles that follows the return of blood to the extremity.

After the worst of it has passed, his fingertips pass over her cheek. “You were never just a one-night stand, Jemma, not to me.”

There’s something else in those words, something deeper than the confession, a reassurance that threatens to cut right to her heart. She presses her palm flat over her chest, over the photostatic veil hiding the very identifiable pair of scars the uprising left her with. They hurt all of a sudden.

“You may be a tender heart,” she says, struggling for the icy tone she so desperately wants, “but I have work to do and your little pipe dream of turning her isn’t going to-”

“She’s an Inhuman.”

It’s not a lie. Grant is capable of it, certainly, but she knows him. She knows his lies from his truths and all the variations in between and this is nothing but honesty.

“That’s not possible,” Jemma says, looking again at the agent. Pale skin, rings under her eyes, hair a mess—that one might be Jemma’s fault though. She looks suddenly small, vulnerable in a way that’s wholly different from when Jemma was scoping her out as prey earlier. “They have tests.”

“And the resistance has the means to work around them. What they can’t do, I handle.”

Jemma laughs. It’s too absurd not to.

“Skye just needs time,” Grant says. He’s taken Jemma by her shoulders and she feels herself sway into the support. She wishes she could say it was a conscious decision. “I’m working on her but I know if I do it too fast, she’ll just end up hating herself and wishing that I’d-”

“Let me kill her?” Jemma cuts in. “You think you can stop that by what? Allowing her to go around killing more of her own people every day? Yes, that growing body count will certainly make her feel better that you waited.” She pushes him away, disgusted.

“You don’t understand. You can’t.”

“Why? Because I didn’t hail Hydra when the time came? No, I was too busy being shot for my beliefs and then used as some mad scientist’s test subject. So sorry I didn’t have the forethought to become a double agent.”

Grant’s expression closes off and Jemma knows that, whatever he is about to say, it will be the absolute truth, but in his mouth it will be as deadly a weapon as any lie. He steps forward, brushing her hair aside to refasten her necklace. His warmth bleeds into her again but this time there’s no desire in her to take him to bed, she only feels cold.

“Because you don’t care about anyone,” he says, his arms dropping to his sides, “not even yourself.”

She was right. Straight through the heart that time.

He tips his head to the back door. “Go. Find some other asshole to fuck to death if you’ve gotta but Skye’s coming home with me.”

For reasons she won’t examine, the knife twists a little deeper.

“Fine.” She straightens her dress, adjusting it to be sure her breasts aren’t hanging out but are still on display. “There are plenty of Hydra agents in this town only too happy to show a girl a good time.” She walks out, stepping on the agent’s hand as she goes purely out of spite. Behind her, Grant gives a long-suffering sigh. She slams the door on it.

 

 

\-----

 

 

“So you said no to a threesome?” Skye asks. She’s asked the same question in different forms twice already this morning.

“I did,” Grant confirms again. Currently he’s in the process of wrapping her hand. He wasn’t able to come up with a good explanation for the damage—it’s not broken, thank goodness, but it is pretty swollen—but she seems to have bought his theory about her smashing it into some guy’s face more easily than she did his story about her and Jemma coming by with an offer of sex.

Skye takes another sip of his hangover cure and immediately shakes her head, wide awake for a few more minutes. “And I _wanted_ to have a threesome with you?”

He chuckles. “You were pretty drunk.” She still looks bothered by the idea so he adds, “And I think you were mostly trying to seal the deal with your new friend.”

Skye perks up, eyes going bright in a way Grant’s seen way too many times. Too bad, he was hoping between the alcohol and the stun gun she’d forget Jemma’s face. “Do you know if she left a number? Or a name?”

“ _Skye_.”

“What? She was really hot! And you don’t know, I could’ve just forgotten it the same way I forgot the temporary insanity that led me to offer her a threesome with _you_.”

Grant rolls his eyes and twists on the coffee table to grab some tape for the gauze. His eyes catch on the muted TV and he’s nearly back around before he realizes what’s off. It’s Bakshi’s morning broadcast, but while his face is on the screen, that’s not him talking.

“Oh shit,” Skye breathes as Grant turns on the volume.

 _“-join us in remembering our dear friend, Suni_ _l,”_ the somber woman on screen says. Beside her is Bakshi’s smiling headshot and beneath it is his full name and _1979-2017_. _“You will be missed.”_

“Died of a brain aneurysm in his sleep,” Skye says. “That sucks.” Grant’s questioning look must be sharper than he means because she sounds kinda defensive when she says, “The crawler said so.”

“Right,” he says. He mutes the standard PSA about keeping watch for Inhuman activity and goes back to Skye’s hand.

He’s not sure what thoughts he’s hiding from while he focuses on the ugly bruising. Jemma proudly gathering up her clothes while Bakshi’s body cooled on the bed? Or something earlier than that, Bakshi grinning like a moron while Jemma touched him the same way she’s touched Grant a dozen times before? Either way, Skye’s the priority. He at least has hope he can save her.

 


End file.
